Interplay of the Arabidopsis nonhost resistance gene NHO1 with bacterial virulence

It is poorly understood why a particular plant species is resistant to the vast majority of potential pathogens that infect other plant species, a phenomenon referred to as nonhost resistance. Here, we show that Arabidopsis NHO1, encoding a glycerol kinase, is required for resistance to and induced by Pseudomonas syringae isolates from bean and tobacco. NHO1 is also required for resistance to the fungal pathogen Botrytis cinerea, indicating that NHO1 is not limited to bacterial resistance. Strikingly, P. s. pv. tomato DC3000, an isolate fully virulent on Arabidopsis, actively suppressed the NHO1 expression. This suppression is abolished in coil plants, indicating that DC3000 required an intact jasmonic acid signaling pathway in the plant to suppress NHO1 expression. Constitutive overexpression of NHO1 led to enhanced resistance to this otherwise virulent bacterium. The presence of avrB in DC3000, which activates a cultivar-specific gene-for-gene resistance in Arabidopsis, restored the induction of NHO1 expression. Thus, NHO1 is deployed for both general and specific resistance in Arabidopsis and targeted by the bacterium for parasitism.